(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-04-16)
Sabitbek, Bolys
Little is know about the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos, even though they
have the potential to provide insight into the evolution of the Martian system, and
could potentially serve as a staging site for a future Mars manned mission. While
attempts to visit Phobos with dedicated missions have been attempted, to date
none have been successful, and no dedicated mission to Deimos has been flown.
As such, much of what is known about the structure and composition of either
moon comes from a small collection of images. This study explores a class of
stable cycler orbits that could visit both moons on a regular cadence, and can be
tuned to fly-by one moon more frequently, or to vary the ground track coverage
to obtain improved surface coverage. While the orbits described can be reached
by a dedicated spacecraft with sufficient delta-V for a Mars insertion, the moti vation here is that the spacecraft is already in an initial insertion orbit, such as a
small-satellite rideshare on an existing Mars mission. Under this assumption, the
results presented illustrate that the exploration of both Phobos and Deimos can be
achieved with a spacecraft with capabilities of modern nanosatellites (cubesats).